It was Malory who gave new life to the Arthurian legends, and to him, more than to any other writer, is due the fascination which Arthurian story has had for so many modern English poets. Malory’s book, as we know from Ascham’s testimony, was exceedingly popular in the Elizabethan age; but there were other causes of the interest then so widely felt in ancient British legends. Throughout the sixteenth century chroniclers were busy in recording, and antiquaries in investigating, the early annals of Britain; and, in the reign of Elizabeth herself, the heightened patriotic feeling of the day was a potent stimulus to all who sought to discover material for, and to reconstruct from it, the history of their country. Hence Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin chronicle in its first printed forms comes to be one of the most eagerly studied books of the time. And it is, perhaps, not fanciful to find in the new interest aroused in the annals and legends of early Britain the influence of the reigning Tudor dynasty. On what other grounds are we to account, for example, for Spenser going out of his way to remind Elizabeth that she can boast of a genuine British ancestry, and that among her forebears is no less a person than the great King Arthur himself? “Thy name, O soveraine Queene, thy realme and race From this renowned Prince derived arre, Who mightily upheld that royall mace Which now thou bear’st, to thee descended farre From mighty kings and conquerours in warre, Thy fathers and great Grandfathers of old, Whose noble deeds above the Northern starre Immortall fame for ever hath enrold; As in that old man’s booke they were in order told.” Here is a compliment of which Geoffrey, could he have foreseen it, would have been as proud as of his inclusion in Chaucer’s ‘Hous of Fame.’ To have been singled out for honour as one “besy for to bere up Troy” was much; it was more to be quoted, by a poet no less illustrious, as an authority for the Arthurian descent of the greatest of British queens. The glorification of the House of Tudor, and of Elizabeth’s Welsh descent, is obvious enough in the lines in _The Faerie Queene_ which refer to the “sparke of fire” that shall “Bee freshly kindled in the fruitfull Ile Of Mona, where it lurked in exile: Which shall breake forth into bright burning flame And reach into the house that bears the stile Of roiall majesty and soveraine name: So shall the Briton blood their crowne agayn reclame. Thenceforth eternal union shall be made Betweene the nations different afore.”[115] In the second book of _The Faerie Queene_ Spenser, following Geoffrey’s “auncient booke hight Briton moniments,” gives a versified “chronicle of Briton kings From Brute to Uther’s rayne,”